Little Warrior

Marcella is our little warrior, fighting hard to recover from her surgery. It takes the first 24 hours for babies to come out of anesthesia and stabilize their body systems. Ella was really groggy and mostly slept yesterday and last night.

She started going into JET, which is where her heart rate increases and her blood pressure drops. They stabilized her heart rate by starting the pace machine. Tyler was interested in knowing how that machine and others worked. She came out of JET and never went back or had to be treated with medicine. She came off of the pace machine.

Today, she opened her eyes a while. She's starting to move around more, bending her legs and squeezing our fingers. She sucks on her tounge and the breathing tube. Her heart rate and respiration rate and blood pressure were all stable today. She is peeing off lots of her extra fluids and her chest tubes are almost done draining.

The doctors tried to SPRINT her today which is the first step towards removing her breathing tubes. This is where they change the settings on the breathing machine so that they can test how she can breathe on her own. This went well, her lungs kicked in, and she breathed on her own for a one-hour test run. Then they did a blood test to see how that looked after the test. It was perfect and the nurse and doctor were impressed and really excited! They will SPRINT her a few more times tonight and should remove her breathing tube her first thing in the morning.

This is super fast recovery. With her breathing tube out, we may be able to start feeding her tomorrow. I know she is really hungry from not eating in 9 days. Although she was getting nourishment from her IVs, she still was having hunger pains in her stomach. So... all is going fantastic here! We give all the praise and glory to God for answering our prayers and helping Ella to heal. Please continue to pray that her heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure would remain stable and that she will be able to have her breathing tube removed soon. I'm sure that it is really uncomfortable for her. She has even tried to pull it out this afternoon.